Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (82 page)

On blenders and food processors: Communications with Mrs. Fred Waring helped clarify many conflicting accounts of her husband’s involvement in the development of the Waring Blendor. Also of assistance in assembling this material was information from Oster and Hamilton Beach, and from
Topsellers
, by Molly Wade McGrath, 1983, Morrow. I am indebted to Dave Stivers, archivist of Nabisco for directing me to Ms. McGrath’s book and for generously providing me with more material on products than I could possibly use in this volume. Also,
New Processor Cooking
, by Jean Anderson, 1983, Morrow.

On Pyrex: Material provided by Corning Glass Works, Corning, New York. (Also see references in Chapter 6 under “Glass Window.”)

On disposable paper cups: In addition to abovementioned general references on inventions,
Why Did They Name It?
by Hannah Campbell, 1964, Fleet Press. This is a gem of a book, highly recommended, and still available in limited number from the publisher in New York. Ms. Campbell provides entertaining histories of the brand names that have become an integral part of the American home. The book began as a series of articles published in
Cosmopolitan
magazine in the 1960s.

One final and excellent source covering a variety of gadgets found in the kitchen, bathroom, and around the home:
The Practical Inventor’s Handbook
, Orville Green and Frank Durr, 1979, McGraw-Hill.

6 In and Around the House

A delightful, informative book on the history and comforts of the home in Western culture is
Home: A Short History of an Idea
, by Witold Rybczynski, 1986, Viking. The book considers the home before the advent of electrical gadgets, after such convenience devices were introduced and proudly displayed as prestige acquisitions, then in modern times, when the decorating vogue has been a nostalgia for past simplicity in which “The mechanical paraphernalia of contemporary living has been put away, and replaced by brass-covered gun boxes, silver bed-side water carafes, and leather-bound books.”

As pertains to this chapter, Mr. Rybczynski paints a picture of home comfort and what it has meant in different times. He writes, “In the seventeenth century, comfort meant privacy, which lead to intimacy and, in turn, to domesticity. The eighteenth century shifted the emphasis to leisure and ease, the nineteenth to mechanically aided comforts—light, heat, and ventilation. The twentieth-century domestic engineers stressed efficiency and convenience.” This general discussion has been fleshed out in detail, invention by invention, through a number of sources listed below.

On lighting the home, from oil lamps in prehistoric times to fluorescent tubes, I found the most detailed single volume to be
The Social History of Lighting
, by William T. O’Dea, 1958, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

On types of glass and glass windows: “A History of Glassmaking,” John Harris,
New Scientist
, May 22, 1986.
This Is Glass
, generously provided by the Corning Glass Works of Corning, New York, and published by the company. Also,
Glass Engineering Handbook
, E. B. Shand, 1980, McGraw-Hill. And “Safety Glass: Its History, Manufacturer, Testing, and Development,” J. Wilson,
Journal of the Society of Glass Technology
, Volume 16, 1932.

Once again, an indispensable book on home convenience inventions is
The Housewares Story
, op. cit. Capsule descriptions of home inventions and inventors are found in the voluminous and entertaining
The Ethnic Almanac
, Stephanie Bernardo, 1981, Doubleday; a book that provides hours of fascinating browsing.

On brooms, carpet sweepers, and vacuum cleaners: An overview appears in
The Housewares Story
, op. cit. The Bissell sweeper can be found in
Great American Brands
, David Powers Cleary, 1981, Fairchild.
Fabulous Dustpan: The Story of the Hoover Company
, by Frank Garfield, 1955, World Publishing. Also on the vacuum cleaner:
Everybody’s Business: An Almanac
, edited by Milton Moskowitz et al., 1982, Harper & Row; a thoroughly entertaining book to browse. Additional material was provided by the Fuller Brush Company.

On the sewing machine and Elias Howe and Isaac Singer:
Brainstorms and Thunderbolts: How Creative Genius Works
, by Carol O. Madigan and Ann Elwood, 1983, Macmillan.
The Patent Book: An Illustrated Guide and History for Inventors, Designers and Dreamers
, James Gregory and Kevin Mulligan, 1979, A & W Publishers.

For a general discussion of the evolution of lawns, “Points of Origin: From Flowery Medieval Greensward to Modern Canned Meadow,” Michael Olmert,
Smithsonian
, May 1983.

On the wheelbarrow:
Everyday Inventions
, M. Hooper, 1976, Taplinger; an excellent and comprehensive reference. And
The Encyclopedia of Inventions
, edited by Donald Clark, 1977, Galahad Books.

On rubber and the garden hose:
Charles Goodyear, Father of the Rubber Industry
, L. M. Fanning, 1955, Mercer Publishing Co.;
Everyday Inventions
, op. cit.; plus information provided by the B. F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio.

On Burpee seeds: Personal communications, and the Burpee company catalogues, plus
Entrepreneurs
, op. cit.

On the lawnmower:
Eureka!
and
The Encyclopedia of Inventions
, op. cit.

7 For the Nursery

It would have been impossible to assemble the material for this chapter without two definitive references on nursery rhymes and fairy tales:
The Classic Fairy Tales
, Iona and Peter Opie, 1974, Oxford University Press; and
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes
, Iona and Peter Opie, 1959, Oxford University Press. The Opies’ thoroughness of research has virtually monopolized this field of investigation; every additional reference I consulted on nursery rhymes and fairy tales expressed an indebtedness to the Opies’ works.

To flesh out the Opies’ material on many historical points, I consulted:
Cinderella: A Folklore Casebook
, edited by Alan Dundes, 1982, Wildman Press. Dr. Dundes provides a fascinating glimpse of this fairy tale in numerous cultures over many centuries.
Jump Rope Rhymes
, Roger D. Abrahams, 1969, American Folklore Society.
American Non-singing Games
, Paul Brewster, 1954, University of Oklahoma Press.
Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads
, Bertrand Bronson, 1959, Princeton University Press.
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
, Iona and Peter Opie, 1967, Oxford University Press.
The Interpretation of Fairy Tales
, Marie Louis von Franz, 1970, Spring Publications. And finally, another work by the Opies,
Children’s Games in Street and Playground
, 1969, Oxford University Press.

Additional material on
The Wizard of Oz
, Bluebeard, and
Dracula
is from
Brainstorms and Thunderbolts
, by Carol O. Madigan and Ann Elwood, 1983, Macmillan.

8 In the Bathroom

A word on Thomas Crapper: According to British popular legend, Thomas Crapper is the inventor of the modern flush toilet, and several early and descriptive Victorian era names for his invention were the Cascade, the Deluge, and the Niagara. Crapper is referred to in many popular histories of the bathroom, but scant information is provided on his background and invariably no sources are listed.

After months of research for this book, I was fortunate enough to turn up what has to be the original source of the Thomas Crapper legend—which appears to be a purely fictive legend at that, perpetrated with droll British humor by author Wallace Reyburn.
Flushed with Pride
: The Story of Thomas Crapper, was published by Reyburn in 1969 in England by Macdonald & Co. and two years later in the United States by Prentice-Hall (now out
of print). The book reads for long stretches as serious biography, but the accumulation of toilet humor puns, double entendres, and astonishing coincidences eventually reveals Wallace Reyburn’s hoax.

In an attempt to shed light on this bit of bathroom lore, here are several references from Reyburn’s “biography” of Thomas Crapper from which the reader can draw his or her own conclusions.

Crapper was born in the Yorkshire town of Throne in 1837, “the year in which Queen Victoria came to the throne.” He moved to London and eventually settled on Fleet Street, where he perfected the “Crapper W.C. Cistern…after many dry runs.” The installation of a flushing toilet at the royal palace of Sandringham was, according to Reyburn, “a high-water mark in Crapper’s career.” He became “Royal Plumber,” was particularly close with his niece Emma Crapper, and had a friend named “B.S.” (For another Reyburn hoax, on the bra, see References, page 439.) Reyburn’s book did not serve as a source for this chapter; the materials that did:

Highly recommended is
Clean and Decent
, by Lawrence Wright, 1960, Viking. The book begins with the Minoan achievements in plumbing and flush toilets and their use of wooden toilet seats. It details the Egyptian contributions, including stone seats, and traces plumbing developments through the accomplishments of British engineers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wright’s book is thorough, and, revealingly, it makes no mention of Thomas Crapper.

Also of assistance in assembling material for this chapter were:
The Early American House
, by Mary Earl Gould, 1965, Charles E. Tuttle; “The Washtub in the Kitchen,” by Bill Hennefrund, September 1947,
Nation’s Business
; and
Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in 20th Century America
, James H. Young, 1967, Princeton University Press.

On the origins of the toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental practices: I am indebted to the American Dental Association for providing me with reprints of journal articles detailing the history of tooth and mouth care; particularly helpful was “The Development of the Toothbrush: A Short History of Tooth Cleansing,” Parts I and II, by Peter S. Golding,
Dental Health
, Volume 21, Nos. 4 and 5, 1982.

The Du Pont Company provided numerous articles from
The Du Pont Magazine
on the development of nylon and nylon toothbrush bristles; most enlightening were “A Personal Possession: Plastic Makes the Modern Toothbrush,” September 1937; “Introducing Exton Bristle: Dr. West’s Miracle-Tuft Toothbrush,” November 1938; and “Birth of a Toothbrush,” October 1951.

An excellent, highly recommended overview is found in
Dentistry: An Illustrated History
, by Malvin E. Ring, 1986, Abrams. This is a colorful account of dentistry from prehistoric times to the mid-twentieth century, enriched by excellent illustrations and photographs. Ring, a professor of dentistry at the State University of New York at Buffalo, focuses on the evolution of dental techniques from genuinely torturous procedures to
modern painless ones, nonetheless dreaded.

Two excellent volumes on the history of false teeth are
The Strange Story of False Teeth
, John Woodforde, 1972, Drake; and
Teeth, Teeth, Teeth
, Sydney Garfield, 1969, Simon and Schuster. The Hagley Museum and Library of Wilmington, Delaware, provided me with excellent articles on the development of dentistry.

On the history of shaving, the razor, and the electric razor: Squibb, Schick, and Gillette provided material on their individual products, while the interested reader is directed to the following popular accounts:
Great American Brands
and
Topsellers
, op. cit.; both of these references also cover the origin of tissues. Also highly readable and informative on Gillette razors and Kleenex tissues is
Why Did They Name It?
Hannah Campbell, op. cit. Ms. Campbell devotes two chapters of her book to the development of items found in the bathroom.

On the origin of soap, in particular floating soap: I wish to thank corporate archivist Edward Rider of Procter & Gamble for providing me with a voluminous amount of research, as well as copies of early advertisements for Ivory Soap.

9 Atop the Vanity

Although many sources were employed to assemble the facts in this chapter, three works in particular deserve mention for their thoroughness and scholarship; one on makeup, one on hair, one on fragrances.

On the origin and evolution of makeup: The single best source I located is unfortunately out of print but available for in-house reading at New York City’s Lincoln Center Library:
A History of Makeup
, by M. Angeloglou, 1970.

On ancient to modern hair care, hair coloring, and wigs:
The Strange Story of False Hair
, by John Woodforde, 1972, Drake. Additional material was provided by personal communications with Clairol, and from statistics on hair coloring in
Everybody’s Business
, op. cit.

On the development of incense and its transition to perfume, then into an industry:
Fragrance, The Story of Perfume from Cleopatra to Chanel
, Edwin T. Morris, 1984, Scribner. Mr. Morris, who teaches fragrance at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, provides a fascinating overview of the subject from its early days in Mesopotamia, where the most prized scent was cedar of Lebanon, through the French domination of the modern perfume industry. For the reader interested in pursuing the subject further than I have detailed, this book is highly recommended. Helping me extend the material into modern times in America was the Avon company. Two popular accounts of the development of Avon are found in
Topsellers
and
Why Did They Name It?
op. cit.

An excellent general reference for the development of combs, hairpins, jewelry, and makeup is
Accessories of Dress
, by Katherine M. Lester and Bess V. Oerke, 1940, Manual Arts Press.